Predator a crossbow nove.., p.23
The Tower of the Tyrant, page 23
Perhaps the path to earning trust was to offer trust in turn. Risking betrayal was the price paid to build the bridge from one person to the next. A strategy that seemed to work for Afanan, at least. And, now that Fola thought of it, a strategy that worked well for Arno, too.
Fola left the gem in its trunk. She stroked Frog’s wing as she walked back to the Garland Inn. At the first blush of dawn light he started to softly coo.
A Girl on the Road
YC 1189
My mother taught me well and good
T’fear the faeries of the wood.
‘They’ll eat your hearts,’ so we were told,
‘And take ye so ye’ll ne’er grow old.’
Parwysh Child’s Rhyme
Jareth had endured enough.
He was never built for the life of a travelling trouper, meandering from place to place, hoping the next inn on the road would accept entertainment in lieu of coin. Nor for hard beds and harder crowds, with little taste for true drama and an overenthusiasm for slapstick and bawdy jests. No, he had been born for silk and sensitivity, and at last fate, or the Old Stones—or whatever powers shaped the stage and direction of his life—had seen fit to match his resources to his nature.
The heavy purse jangled and thumped in his saddlebag, louder than the clop of Bess’s hooves on the road. Louder, even, than the lingering screams of the terrified and dying. He had been willing to endure a difficult life, so long as it provided the opportunity to spend some nights on stage disappearing into truth and beauty, performing the soliloquies and monologues of the great poets. Tensirr of Alberon’s The Descent of Caius, with its famous speech plumbing the depths of despair, pondering the questions that plagued every mortal life. The oft-quoted final conversation between Polon and Bithia in Martinette Martin’s How Soft Blows the Eastern Wind? full of heartfelt longing masked by stinging wit. A true encapsulation of tortured love long denied, if ever he could find a proper partner to perform it.
That one night, when he was ten years old, summoned from the brothel’s vulgar scents into the elevated perfumes of The Rose—Afondir’s great theatre—Jareth had seen his mother infuse Bithia with a sublime reluctance, glimpses of honesty showing through a mask of barbs and innuendos. Nothing he had seen since—nothing he had performed in his entire life—had ever matched that golden memory.
If only she had raised him instead of abandoning him upon her ascent to the stage. A child had been a burden better left behind in a nest of frayed silks and cheap perfume with the other pleasure women of the Daisy and Drake. He might have matched her. He had the potential—had always had it, he felt in the marrow of his bones—but never a chance in twenty-seven years to truly unlock it. A seed of talent unwatered, a sprout untended, forced to grow tough and stunted merely to survive among the weeds of the wild world.
No longer. With the gold in his saddlebag, he could start anew. Rent decent lodgings—Stones, perhaps buy lodgings—in Afondir, in the entertainment district. Attend performances every night. Learn at the feet of the greatest thespians in the world. Refine his craft, work his way up from the satellite stages until he, at last, strode the ancient boards of The Rose and threw his voice to be caught and conveyed by its wondrous, swooping rafters.
There had been a twinge of shame when the thought had first occurred, in the moment that woman had opened her hand and he had felt the weight settle in the bottom of his hat. The nightmare that had followed, however, had settled his mind and soothed his heart. The girl Siwan, no matter how lovely her voice and deliciously tragic her past, was a danger. Afanan knew it. Even Llewyn knew it. Travelling with her was like living with a knife to your neck. In the four years since the last time one of her fits had called ghosts down from the sky and soaked a field in blood, Jareth had often woken from nightmares. He had spent more than a few days watching the girl from the corner of his eye, wondering when next she might tumble over the edge of sanity and control.
In all likelihood, the girl had killed the rest of the troupe that very night. Or she would, eventually. It was inevitable. Better—not just pragmatically but morally better in some sense that Jareth felt but could not put words to—that he take the gold and start afresh for himself. Some good deserved to sprout from that midden heap.
He rode into the depth of the night, passing Bryngodre, the branches of its ancient oak like a dark hand reaching to grasp at the night sky. It would have been safer and faster, he knew, to ride south towards Halway into Forgard, and thence east to Afondir, but he and his horse had panicked in the chaos. To traverse the Windmarsh by night was to gamble with Bess’s ankles, to say nothing of the risk of bandits emerging from the hills, or the unburied dead rising from ancient battlefields. A possibility he hoped he had left behind, but he had never expected to find himself in the company of a young girl whose weeping could rouse wraiths to begin with. The memory of hands reaching down, of silhouettes standing at odd angles in the sky, of bodies coming apart like paper, made it difficult to discount any possibility.
At the place where the old First Folk road vanished beneath the marsh, he dismounted and sought a campsite. An old, time-worn wall of mortared stone stood atop a nearby hill. Not true shelter, but enough to shield him from the wind for a few hours until dawn. He dismounted, tied Bess’s reins to a jutting bit of the wall and gave her a hurried rub-down. Sudden, unplanned flight left little time to gather such things as a firebox or a bundle of kindling, and so with no material for a fire he merely wrapped himself tight in his cloak and sat with his back to the crumbling ruin. Drowsy memories carried him to sleep and became hazy dreams: of The Rose; of golden curls bouncing; of old Alma pointing up from the commoners’ pit below the stage and whispering, ‘There she is, little one. There’s your mother.’
He would join her, finally, soon enough.
Whickering and stamping hooves drew him out of sleep. Bess tossed her head, her eyes as wide as coins, the reins taut between her and the wall. Jareth scrambled to his feet, blinking sleep from his eyes, searching the sky and the scant vegetation clinging to the hills for sign of unnatural wind, or dark silhouettes against the stars. Surely Siwan’s terror would not have followed him this far. Unless she had somehow learned of his thievery and treachery, and sent her wraiths to hunt him down.
A silly thought. The girl could no more control them than control her seizures. Still, he regretted having shown Llewyn the hat of coins. The troupe might well come after him, if any of them survived.
His gaze lit on a silhouette crossing from the First Folk Road towards him. Panic, fear and drowsiness made it seem a wraith at first glance, and he reached for Bess’s reins and began untying them with quaking fingers.
‘Ho there!’ a young woman’s voice called up. The silhouette raised one arm in nervous greeting. The other gripped a walking stick. ‘I’d no notion the spot was occupied. I’ll move along, then.’
Some of the tension faded from Jareth’s shoulders. No ghost, then, but a girl. Alone, crossing the Windmarsh in the dark. He knew, from stories bandied about by the ladies of the Daisy and Drake, of the kinds of lives that forced young women to flee home by moonlight and seek their own fortunes. The night wind caught her pale dress and pressed it against a willowy, malnourished frame. She was some villager, surely, of peat-cutting or mining stock, fleeing a husband who beat her, or a father with malformed desires, or simply the poverty of a peasant’s life in these hard, haunted times.
There was danger in meeting strangers on the road, of course, but he had never seen a less dangerous-seeming stranger. A slip of a girl, desperate, without any weapon. In need of protection, surely, more than a threat to his own safety.
‘It’s only a single wall, but you’re welcome to share!’ Jareth called down. ‘At least until dawn!’
She hesitated a moment, then resumed her trek towards him, picking her way with her walking stick through the brambles and weeds over treacherous ground. She carried no bundle, nor any bags that he could see. Truly a desperate flight, then, to match his own.
Hazy visions, dreamlike, drifted through his mind as she drew near and the moonlight caught the sharp outline of her handsome, comely face. A spray of freckles over pale, striking cheeks beneath flaxen hair that glinted in the moonlight, even in the shadow of her hood. This was a second turn of good fortune. Fate had brought her to him, her rescuer from whatever torment she had escaped. He recalled the unlikely, destined meeting of Polon and Bithia upon the moors of Llysbryn that begat their whirling storm of romance and passion.
Might his life not mirror art? The destitute youth raised up from poverty, first to wealth, then to love, then to fame? Granted, only a generous interpretation of his age might class him a youth, but the fates worked in their own time.
The girl smiled shyly as she reached the top of the hill. Jareth matched her smile, then dipped a half-bow and gestured to the wall. ‘Make yourself comfortable, my dear,’ he said. ‘I regret that I have no fire, nor any victuals to offer you. I, too, was called to sudden nocturnal flight. I am called Jareth, of the Silver Lake Troupe. You might have heard tell of us.’
The girl lowered herself to sit against the wall, bracing her walking stick in the crook of her arm and rubbing warmth into her bony hands. There was a dull glint on her thumb. An unpolished silver ring, perhaps a family heirloom taken in the hope that it might pay her way to freedom. ‘Afraid not, sir,’ she said. ‘We don’t get much news of such things as troupes where I’m from.’
Not only a peasant girl, but one of such isolated, impoverished stock. Yet he could see the light of true intelligence in her wide, frightened eyes. She had the look of promise, beyond her simple beauty.
‘Where is that, my dear?’ he said. ‘And what are you called?’
‘Sara, from a little mining village just on the far side of the Afoneang, north of Caer Palu,’ she said, tucking her hair behind her ear and drawing her hood close. ‘Lucky thing I passed you here, mister. It’s been a lonely road. I could swear I’d heard rimewolves howling in the night, and seen ghosts in the air. Feels safer in company.’
‘I’m glad for it,’ Jareth said, though her talk of beasts and haunts stirred up his own fears afresh. ‘Not rimewolves, though, surely, this far south?’
‘Couldn’t say, mister,’ she said. ‘Likely just my fears adding teeth to the wind over the hills. Where are you bound to? And where from?’
‘From Parwys, where no fear or rumour is needed to add terror to the wind. I’d not go that way if I were you, dear Sara.’
Her eyes lit up at that. ‘Oh? What happened?’
Jareth felt uneasy sharing Siwan’s and Llewyn’s secrets, but neither could he let this poor, naive creature walk into the charnel house Siwan’s curse had made of the festival grounds—if not the entire city. ‘You have heard rumour, even in your little pocket of the world, of the haunting that claimed the life of the king? It assaults Parwys even now with renewed ferocity. I was an actor in the festival there, called to celebrate Prince Owyn’s coronation, but I fled the horrors. I go to Afondir now, a city yet spared the haunting, where I will seek my fortune on the world’s greatest stage. I would welcome your company if you’ve need of an escort. A longer road than to Parwys, but a safer one.’
‘Thankee for the invitation,’ Sara answered. ‘But my errand takes me to Parwys after all, it would seem.’
‘Your errand?’ Before he could ask more, the deep howl of a wolf split the air. Bess stamped and whickered, pulling at her reins till mortar cascaded where Jareth had tied them. He reluctantly turned his back to the girl and stroked the mare’s face and neck. ‘It’s all right,’ he whispered, hoping to soothe her, though his own hackles stood high. Sara had not been mistaken, it seemed, about wolves in the hills. Simple grey wolves come down from the Greenwood, surely, not the white monsters that prowled the Windwall and the northern coast. Still, an unwelcome voice in the night.
‘What did you say your troupe was called, again?’ Sara asked.
‘The Silver Lake Troupe, but it’s no matter now. I’ve left them behind. As I said, I intend—’
He gasped as pain shot through him, rising from the small of his back. Shuddering, he looked down to find a glistening spar of wood protruding from his belly. The spar tore free of him, and the warmth of his body poured out with it. He grabbed at anything to keep his feet, clutching in futility at his saddlebag as he collapsed beside Bess, who screamed, her eyes rolling.
‘What …?’ He wheezed, then sputtered. Brackish blood poured from his torn stomach into his mouth. Sara stepped over him. Dark droplets fell from her walking stick, now narrowed to a wicked, red-stained point. Her peasant’s clothes had vanished, replaced by a tunic woven of autumn leaves. The pale softness of her skin had become rough, bark-like ridges.
Llewyn? Jareth thought, his mind a fog of pain and confusion. This girl could be his daughter. The same sharp angles to her face. The same dark, inhuman depth in the eyes that now stared down at him, considering.
‘P-please,’ he begged, uncertain what he asked for as reason drained out of him.
She turned away. With two quick slashes of her walking stick she cut Bess’s reins and the straps of her saddle. It fell in a jangle of harness and clatter of coins. Gold royals spilled from the saddlebag, rolling through the spreading pool of Jareth’s blood. The girl pulled herself onto Bess’s bare back and wheeled her about. The horse’s forelegs churned the air.
Jareth flinched from fear that they might fall and crush out the last of his life. What felt an eon passed before he opened his eyes again, now to a puff of hot, rancid breath on his frigid cheek. A white-furred face as broad as a bear’s peered down at him. Its muzzle was sharp and pointed, its jowls pulled back to show teeth like arrowheads. A whistle split the air and the rimewolf turned to follow its master.
Jareth took a wheezing breath into cold, fluttering lungs. He swallowed blood into a ruined stomach and thought with agony of The Rose and his mother’s golden curls.
‘There she is, little one.’ A goddess, distant and impossible, haloed by the lanterns of the stage.
Bright memories that faded as darkness whirled down.
The Needs of the Crown
YC 1189
You have asked why the wretched do not flee their suffering the comforts of the City. If our gates are truly open, why do any remain in the world beyond the walls? An astute observation. In reply, I would ask whether you have shared these letters with the common folk of your domain, and whether there can be a hierophant in a community of true equals.
Letter from Archivist Tan Semn to Hierophant Adhamha III of Goll, YC 1166
Bloody water sluiced from Torin’s hands into the washbasin. An ache had settled behind his eyes while he tended Orn’s wounds. A product of exhaustion and overuse of his powers. A pleasant discomfort, however. Evidence of the effort spent in saving the boy’s life.
Were Orn not a Knight of Stillness, he would have died. His virtue of perseverance had kept him clinging to life by a thread while Torin extracted the blade from his flank, packed the wound with gauze, and called upon Beren, Agion of Fidelity, to burn away infection and chase away pain. The monstrous blade had carved through three of Orn’s ribs and torn apart his left lung. His breaths were slow and rattling, but steady, and his eyes no longer flitted about beneath their lids. The boy’s own powers would knit the wound well enough, but it would take time. In the stupor of miraculous healing, Orn’s body had relaxed, his catlike spine stretching to its fullest extension, leaving him with sickening, inhuman proportions. And yet Torin had never felt more affection towards the boy.
Torin wiped his hands on a ragged cloth and eyed the bloody weapon. To call it a ‘knife’ was like calling a full-grown, slavering wolf a puppy. It had all the proportions of a dagger, but the blade was as wide as Torin’s hand and as long as his forearm.
‘What do you think, Anwe?’ Torin said.
His Knight of Action was sitting on the far side of the chamber. In a friendly gesture towards the Count of Afondir, Prince Owyn had provided them with a guest room in the newer wing of the palace, with attached quarters for a valet or bodyman. A tapestry on one wall depicted the first meeting between King Abal, the hero of Parwys’s founding myths, and his rival turned friend King Barwon of Glascoed. Opposite the tapestry, windows of coloured glass showed the castle courtyard, filtering the thin light of predawn into pastel hues. Anwe sat upon a bench in those slanted columns of light, the broad blade of her sword across her knees, muttering prayers and scraping a whetstone again and again and again, all the while Torin had seen to Orn’s wound. Now she looked up, her scarred face twisted in righteous fury.
‘Too heavy and awkward for an ordinary hand,’ she said, fixing her gaze on the knife. ‘I’ve seen two bodies in the kingdom who might wield it with any skill. The prince’s housecarl, and the four-armed brute who came to court with the sorceress.’
‘Indeed.’ Torin threw the rag onto a growing, red-soaked pile: the sheet that had been on Orn’s cot when he’d staggered into the room, spraying blood with every breath; his shirt and trousers, which Torin had ripped from the boy’s painracked frame. Whoever had done this would suffer. Fortunate that there were so few candidates. ‘My thoughts trace similar lines. Orn was following the sorceress. I would wager this belongs to her man.’
Anwe shrugged. ‘Tell me when, and I’ll take his head.’
Their position was too precarious to let Anwe carve her way through the kingdom. If not for an unwillingness to aggravate the Count of Afondir—the wealthiest and most powerful of Parwysh nobility—Queen Medrith would likely have banished Torin and his knights from the kingdom already.
Any pleasure he had felt from helping Orn faded to fresh nausea. His reliance on Eurion of Afondir, that arrogant pustule of a man, was disgraceful. Torin would need a stronger hook on the court—on the prince, ideally—before he could take such direct action.
